The Janine Bolon Show with Michelle Seiler Tucker - 99 Authors Project, Season 5, Episode 5

The 99 Authors Project – Season 5 – Episode 5 with Michelle Seiler Tucker36 min read

Michelle Seiler Tucker

Michelle is the Founder and CEO of Seiler Tucker Incorporated. Michelle has sold over 500 businesses to date and currently owns and operates several successful businesses. Michelle Seiler Tucker holds the following professional designations and certifications: The Merger & Acquisition Master Intermediary (M&AMI), Certified Senior Business Analyst (CSBA), Best-Selling Author, and Panelist for Merger & Acquisition Source.

She is the leading authority on buying, selling, and improving businesses, as well as increasing a business’ revenue streams. Over the past decade Michelle has sold several hundred businesses and franchises. She continues to help buyers from all walks of life buy the American Dream, create financial freedom, be their own boss, and obtain a better quality of life.

In addition, Michelle is the author of a number of best-selling and award winning books, including Sell Your Business for More Than It’s Worth, Think and Grow Rich Today and Exit Rich™: The 6-P™ Method To Sell Your Business For Huge Profit.

Transcript of the Show

Bryan Hyde
Welcome to the Janine Bolon show, where we share tips from around the globe. As we guide practical people with their finances using money tips, increase their incomes through side businesses, and maintain their sanity by staying in their creative zone.

Janine Bolon
Hi, this is Janine Bolon here and welcome to today’s show, which is loaded with quality content on working on your business, creating a book to promote your business and a few money tips sprinkled in. Now The Janine Bolon Show is the syndicated program of four podcast shows that got syndicated in October of 2021. Three Minute Money Tips, The Thriving Solopreneur, The Writers Hour Creative Conversations and The Practical Mystic Show.

Janine Bolon
Today, we will be highlighting Michelle Seiler Tucker who has sold over 500 businesses to date, and currently owns and operates several of her own successful businesses. Now, literally, it’s hundreds and hundreds of businesses we’re talking about. Now she’s the leading authority on buying, selling and improving businesses as well as increasing a business’s revenue streams. Now, what makes Michelle a formidable force in her industry is that she closes nearly 99% of all the offers that she writes, and she obtains on average 20 to 40% higher selling for her clients. Now, yes, her numbers are impressive, but it is her ability to create those win-win situations for her buyers and sellers that really is what guarantees her success. I just wanted to let you know that Michelle really has a well-oiled machine when it comes to running businesses and fine tuning. But today, we are lucky enough to have her with us, because she is also on top of everything else an award winning and bestselling author of Sell Your Business for More. And in the second-best seller Think and Grow Rich. Today, Michelle details the importance of an entrepreneurial mindset as it relates to business in order to achieve success. And her third book, which is the one we’re highlighting today is Exit Rich, it’s the one where we will be chatting about the must have guide for all business owners, whether you’re just gearing up to sell a business now, or you’re just starting out in with your own company. She wants to give you some guidance on how to sell for huge profits in the future. And so today I want to say welcome to the show, Michelle, it’s lovely to have you.

Michelle Seiler Tucker
Thank you, Janine, it’s a pleasure to be with you.

Janine Bolon
And as you know, this year, I’m interviewing all kinds of different types of authors from different types of businesses. And just out of curiosity, did you write under your real name, or is this a pen name for the book that you wrote?

Michelle Seiler Tucker
Michelle Seiler Tucker?

Janine Bolon
Yeah, believe it or not, there are a lot of authors that don’t use their real name. And so that’s why I always ask the question, I’m sorry, that surprises you, but that’s it’s that’s true.

Michelle Seiler Tucker
And why would somebody using that another name to write a book under. No mine’s Michelle Seiler Tucker. I would never use another name.

Janine Bolon
Yeah, believe it or not, Stephen King wrote under a pen name for many years. So yeah, so there’s a lot of authors that do that. Mainly, they’re in the fictional space. But I always like to ask, because you never know what pops out of somebody’s mouth with that. So do you have a marketing background before you started writing your books? Or were you strictly into merger and acquisitions?

Michelle Seiler Tucker
So I’m an entrepreneur. So I have a entrepreneurial background. I don’t have a marketing background. But in school, I, I always will. I mean, even when I was a child, at the age of 7/8/9, I wasn’t your typical little girl because I didn’t play with dolls and didn’t play with toys. I walked around with a notebook and a pen, and I would walk up the perfect strangers and ask him, hi, I’m Michelle, who are you? What do you do? How did you get started?

Janine Bolon
Oh my gosh.

Michelle Seiler Tucker
So my mom always thought I was gonna be the next Barbara Walters, and, you know, be on a TV interview with everyone. But little did she know that I was gonna be a great entrepreneur, because I’m like a kid in a candy store. I am so curious. I’m so interested of how entrepreneurs have started multimillion multibillion dollar companies on a kitchen table in their pickup truck, you know, in a garage. And I just am so passionate about entrepreneurship. So that’s what my background is in. And that’s why, you know, I have an M&A company. Before that I had a franchise sales contract development franchise consulting company. And I’ve had, you know, many different businesses along the way. I still own different businesses. I just love breathe, eat, sleep, entrepreneurship.

Janine Bolon
Yeah. Well, thank you for being on the show today, because I know we have a lot to learn from you. So just out of curiosity, what surprised you the most about the book marketing process as well as the publishing of your book? Because I know we all have stories when it comes to that.

Michelle Seiler Tucker
Yeah, you know, when I wrote my very first book in 2013, Sell Your Business for More Than It’s Worth I self-published. And I had, I didn’t have a marketing company, but they were not successful at all. And what helps me the most with that book is really, people would read it and then they will call me and like Inc called me for an article. And so Inc was my number one marketing resource for Sell Your Business for More Than It’s Worth. And Think and Grow Rich, we had a whole publishing company marketing company behind us. Exit Rich I didn’t self-published, I didn’t want to self-publish another book because I want to make sure I can make the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and you know, some of the best seller categories and get different awards and stuff. But I hired a few marketing companies, lots of marketing companies. I started out with the biggest marketing company in New York City, did Hillary Clinton’s book. They did some of the biggest name’s books. They were terrible, terrible. Now, granted, we launched in 2021, because of the pandemic, but they couldn’t sell any books. So I was spending a tremendous amount of money a month for just a marketing company, I was spending more money for another, you know, amount for the publicist company. But they weren’t selling any books. So I ended up firing them, then, you know, all these people come out of the woodwork and say, oh, I can do this. I can do this. I can do that. So I hired lots of different people for marketing. And we did end up selling a lot of books, but it’s really mine and Sharon Lechter’s, who’s my co-author, it’s really all grassroots efforts. You know, we did so much social media, we did so much Zoom calls, podcast, I did over 300 podcasts. Most of the books that I sold for Exit Rich and Sharon Lechter sold for Exit Rich were from our podcast. She also connected with people like Grant Cardone. And so I remember one time she was at a live zoom Grant Cardone event, she texts me, she goes, what’s wrong, the site’s not working. And what’s wrong? What happened? Well, they crashed your site. Looks that they crashed the site. So I had to call GoDaddy and said, look, I need more bandwidth here. And so most of our book sales really came out of our grassroots efforts. It didn’t come from any other efforts. And I hired so much. And so many people and I spent so much money and wasted a lot of money. But I learned a lot from the next book.

Janine Bolon
And that’s really the thing, a lot of authors talk to us about what didn’t work. And I want to say thank you for that. Because there is so much out there, the people are sharing with you of oh, this’ll work. That’ll work. And you don’t know until the mistakes are made. So thank you for making the mistakes, as I always say to authors, thank you for making your mistakes, so I don’t make them and make sure you make different mistakes from me. Okay. And then we’ll learn from each other. So if you had, this is one of my you know, looking 2020 hindsight kind of questions. What would you change if you started marketing your book today? Obviously, you answered a little bit of that you would have gone more with the grassroots. And you said you got a lot of leverage with your podcasting. So how would you actually manifest that today to market your book if you were to do that today?

Michelle Seiler Tucker
Well, one thing is, I probably wouldn’t launch during a pandemic.

Janine Bolon
Who saw that coming, right?

Michelle Seiler Tucker
I finished a book in 2019. And we were supposed to launch in April 2020. And then this pandemic hit. So what was nice about it is it gave us a long runway to market the book. But then people started getting aggravated because they would buy the book but then not get the book. So we ended up sending PDFs of the book. So you bought essential PDF. Now let me tell you, something. The readers loved it. We have lots of case studies from business owners going, look like we have a pharmaceutical company, we’re selling for $100 million. And he said, I printed out your book and ledger. And I gave each one of your sections, especially the six pieces, to each one of my department heads and I told them do everything she says. It was good that we had a long runway.

Michelle Seiler Tucker
I think one of the things you know podcasts, like I said, really helped us out. I have a good friend. I had a friend of mine that wrote for us in Inc. We got in Forbes. We got in almost so many different publications and that really helped us and that was a publicist. So I would definitely do the publicist. I would hire a good publicist. They had much more for us than the marketing company. Because a marketing company supposed to sell books and publicists are supposed to get you interviews, TV interviews, get you really good podcasts, it’s hard to get on your own and then they’re also really good at you know, getting you in all these have articles and things like that, online print, etc. So definitely hire the publicist. If I hire another marketing person, I’m really going to do more due diligence. Clean because I’m in mergers and acquisitions. And I didn’t do enough due diligence because I saw Hillary Clinton. But guess what? It’s easy to market a whole like Clinton book because everybody knows her and everybody knows she lost the election.

Janine Bolon
Right?

Michelle Seiler Tucker
But it’s not easy to market, you know, somebody who’s not famous. So we have all these famous people. And I got caught up in that and oh, well, gosh, he’s so good. But he’s good at selling famous people’s books. He’s not good at selling just, you know, normal authors that are not famous yet.

Janine Bolon
Exactly.

Michelle Seiler Tucker
So I would definitely stick with the publisher, I would definitely, like I said, get a marketing person, a marketing company, but make sure you do your due diligence, and make sure you know, it’s a good fit, because he was not a good fit. And because he hadn’t worked too hard. You know, he didn’t want to work. And so I would do the podcast; I recommend a podcast for all of you, it’s so easy to set up podcasts. I’ve been on not only did the podcast sell books, the podcast bought me a lot of clients. Now another thing I would do early on that I didn’t really know about was Clubhouse.

Michelle Seiler Tucker
I didn’t really know about Clubhouse. I’ve never been on Clubhouse before. And somebody says to me, you need to go on Clubhouse. I went on Clubhouse and sold a bunch of books, but I would have done it much earlier. I think I would have done that differently. And, you know, I think I think other than that. I mean, we really well. Here’s the other thing. In 2019 we had all these events setup. So Sharon Lechter and I were both international speakers, keynote speakers. So we had all these events set up that we were selling books at. So they would pay us to speak and they were buying so many books. Well guess what? All that shut down. So all those books out. But then the publicist got me YPL, Young Professionals Leadership in Jersey, they bought 250 books. So it’s really important to get a good good good publicist.

Janine Bolon
Oh, clubhouse, yes. A lot of people have done well with that. Yeah.

Janine Bolon
And that’s where you would put your money is definitely in the publicist camp.

Michelle Seiler Tucker
Yeah. So I’d hire a great publicist because I would have never got YPL, I wouldn’t have got in some of these great article, some of these great magazines, publications. Also now I write a column from Inc. for Inc, every month, because the publicist got me that gig.

Janine Bolon
Well done. Michelle, that just makes me happy. I love it. When I hear stories like that. I’m like, you go girl, you keep rocking that.

Michelle Seiler Tucker
So much better than the marketing company?

Janine Bolon
Yes, yes, amazing.

Michelle Seiler Tucker
Often times better. And, you know, marketing companies just don’t really sell books. So you gotta, you gotta really, really, really be careful of who you hire. And like I said, do your due diligence, but I would hire the same publicist. So if anybody wants referral from me, let me know.

Janine Bolon
Feel free to contact me. I’d be glad to refer you.

Michelle Seiler Tucker
You’re in business and you’re writing books, the hardest thing is not writing the book. The hardest thing is marketing. And the hardest thing in business, writing books, anything we do is finding the right person/company to help us because there are so many wolves out there in sheep clothing. Yes,

Janine Bolon
I agree. Yes, I’ve met a few of those wolves. So what story do you like to tell about yourself that gets the most laughs when you’re doing your keynote speeches, and you’re doing your events? We authors have these specific stories that we like to tell on ourselves. I’d love to hear one of yours.

Michelle Seiler Tucker
Well, it’s not really a story, but it does. It does make the audience laugh. And you got to be very careful about the audience when you tell this story. So I’m Michelle Seiler Tucker, everybody trips over the name, Seiler, nobody can pronounce it or spell it. And I was going to get rid of that name. And I was talking to a brand specialist and like, you absolutely have to give her that name. We’re on the phone and like nobody could spell it. Nobody can say it. And you’re an international speaker. You need to just be Michelle Tucker. He goes silent for about five minutes. I’m like, are you there? Are you there? What happened? You know and there were a couple of people on the call he goes, okay, you cannot drop the name Seiler. Okay, Michelle Seiler Tucker, and I go, why? And he goes because there is a porn star named Michelle Tucker. In California and no matter how much money you spend on marketing, it’s hard to rise above porn.

Janine Bolon
It really is. The SEO engines cater to those sorts of individuals. You’re absolutely right. And just for those of you who may not know, Michelle Seiler Tucker is because her name is spelled S-E-I-L-E-R, and it took me three times before I could get her name pronounced correctly. However, now that I have Michelle Seiler Tucker’s name pronounced correctly, I will not forget it. And that is the key to branding, isn’t it?

Michelle Seiler Tucker
Absolutely. And you know what? And the reason I tell this story, the reason I tell the story every time I speak, I got to be careful with my audience. I would never do that at a church. But the reason I say that is because when they go to Google, they always googling you when you’re speaking. You know, they’re sitting on this like, well, who is she? What did she do? You know, can I trust her? I like her. Can I trust her? Can I do business with her, and they Google. Well, I have to say Michelle Seiler Tucker because they just Google Michelle Tucker. And I have to tell them look, don’t Google Michelle Tucker, you’re gonna get a porn star. I’m not the porn star, Google Michelle Seiler Tucker. And it’s funny because I see them start pulling out their phones, looking, and I’m like, I see you, I see you pulling out your phone’s googling Michelle Tucker. And that why I always say before I speak, because people are going to Google you, you always want to manage your reputation. You always want to manage your online presence.

Janine Bolon
And one of the things I can tell you, for those of you who cannot see Michelle, right now, she is a very beautiful woman. And it’s one of those things, she has this long, gorgeous blonde hair. And it’s one of those things where you definitely don’t want to be affiliated with Michelle, the other Michelle, I guess we’ll just say it that way. So Well,

Michelle Seiler Tucker
Thank you. We look nothing alike.

Janine Bolon
Exactly. Thank heavens, right, thank heavens that you don’t. Because I could understand why that would happen. But one of the things that I love asking authors is how, how have you noticed what’s the biggest change you’ve seen in yourself since you started marketing your books? You know, there is a change. I know what has happened with me and my business and all that. But what would you say has been the biggest change for yourself since you started marketing your books?

Michelle Seiler Tucker
Well, that’s a great, great question. And the reason that’s such a great question is because I’m very good. And that this is not, I’m not bragging, I’m not saying this to impress you, I’m saying this to impress upon you. I’m not saying this impress you, I’m saying this impress upon you. I’m a very I’m really a good, experienced mergers and acquisitions advisor. And I don’t just sell businesses, I specialize in buying and selling fixing and growing companies are part of a business owners, investing my money, my core competencies, my resources, my time. But selling private businesses is the best kept secret, we can’t tell anyone without everybody’s permission to do so. We need the sellers, and we need the buyers. And I was the best kept secret. So nobody knew who I was. They didn’t know of me. Sellers will refer other sellers to me, when I really wanted to blow up the business and help more entrepreneurs exit rich. And so when I went to when I, you know, I went to my very first conference in 2011. I actually got a mentor in 2011. And if I had to do over again, I probably would do that sooner. So I can show you how to write a book. And I loved writing I told you as a little girl, I love writing. And I used to write stories and poems and even lyrics, you know, I write music. And so I said, okay, well, I’ll write a book. And that’s when Sell Your Business for More Than It’s Worth. And my whole world changed. My business changed. My business blew up. And the biggest resource there, like I said, was Inc. You know, we got featured in Inc.com. And all of our business came from there, but I went to I got speaking events that I never been offered before. I was invited to different masterminds for talking about my book, different book clubs, people started knowing who I was-my brand. You know, my brand name went up exponentially. Now I have brand recognition, brand awareness. And it was it was huge. And I self-published that book.

Janine Bolon
Right?

Michelle Seiler Tucker
Yes, I self-published. So when I wrote Exit Rich, oh, Think and Grow Rich Today was great as well, but I was in a book with other people, which is great. It’s great to be in a book with other like-minded entrepreneurs. And then when I wrote Exit Rich, I blew up even more. And it does, you know, I don’t know if it changes me personally, but it really really helped me to get my brand out there, to get my message out there. And I want it because my true passion is helping entrepreneurs. My true help passion is helping entrepreneurs save their business because look, small business. We have over 32 point million small businesses employ over half the US workforce. So many of them are going out of business. We lose small businesses; we lose the economy. I mean, small business supports the American economy over know, like I said, employ over half the US workforce. So I want to help business owners. The only way you can help more people is to get more well branded, more well known. And you do that through books; it’s one of the easiest things to do books and podcasts. It’s not hard to write a book, but everybody makes it so everybody, like overcomplicates it when they write books.

Janine Bolon
I totally agree with that one. So what would be like your five top tips that you would give debut authors that are getting ready to start selling their books? What are some tips you would give them? From what you’ve learned.

Michelle Seiler Tucker
From writing or to start selling?

Janine Bolon
To start selling. Yeah, let’s make the assumption that they, they’ve finished their book launch, and now they’re into the actual marketing of their book.

Michelle Seiler Tucker
Number one, get a publisher. Because self-publishing and look, you got a really well, let me let me back up a little bit. Before you even write your book, you need to be crystal clear on what your objectives are. What are you trying to accomplish? Who’s your reader? What message are you trying to get across? Why are you writing the book in the first place? How are you all on? How do you get a return on investment? It’s over 30,000 books being published every single month, maybe more now. And so a lot of people just want to write books, because that’s what they want to do. But it’s never, it’s never gonna bring your return on investment. So you really have to look at that book and say, okay, what’s my endgame here? What am I what am I selling? How can I apply this? How can I get money for this, you need to start with that first before you go to the market. Now, if you just say I want to write a book, because I want to put on my website, want to do webinars and things like that, that’s fine self-publish shot. But if you want to book this couldn’t be on Amazon, they could possibly be a Wall Street Journal, USA Today, best seller, they could be, you know, in the airport stores, I mean, Exit Rich is in all of the Hudson airports, I would have never, I can never get that done with Sell Your Business for More Than It’s Worth, because I self-published.

Janine Bolon
Right?

Michelle Seiler Tucker
Now, if you don’t care about being a Hudson, that’s fine. That’s where you, you have to get crystal clear on what you’re trying to accomplish what your objectives are. So then you want to find a publisher, then you’ve got to ask yourself, okay, wait a minute. What type of publisher do I want? Because a lot of publishers control the content. You can’t use that content anymore. And I said, absolutely, no, no, this is 22 years of knowledge.

Janine Bolon
Right.

Michelle Seiler Tucker
Then to Exit Rich, nobody’s going to put nobody controls me, and nobody is going to control my content. So then you might want to look for a hybrid, a hybrid with a thought hybrid approach. And that’s where they’re a publishing company. But they’re nontraditional publishing company. So you can own the content. They still do marketing, you know, they still do all this different stuff. I mean, they got, they did my publishing company is a hybrid. And they did great on getting the press release, they did great on getting me as an Inc, I would have never gotten a Inc original without them.

Janine Bolon
Right?

Michelle Seiler Tucker
And so you just got to get crystal clear. Self-publish, publish, what kind of publishing company, but most importantly, how do you get ROI?

Janine Bolon
Right? How are you going to get that return on that investment?

Michelle Seiler Tucker
Well so many of these people just want to write a book and always ask them, okay, so what’s after the book? And I’m like, what do you mean, I go, why are you going to do consulting on this subject? What are you going to do to get to make money off the book? Because you’re not going to ever get paid a lot of money or a lot of royalties just because you wrote a good book? You’re not.

Janine Bolon
Yeah, that that kind of paradigm left us in 1999. A lot of people don’t understand that there was that big sea change happening at the turn of the century. They don’t know that. And that Hollywood doesn’t really help us though, either, because they still promote the author as being you know, they make money off the royalties.

Michelle Seiler Tucker
Yeah, like the call that was that now that just came out, Where The Crawdads Sing. It was written by a lady who’s now 73 years old, she’s been writing that book forever. So they made a movie out of it. But that’s once in a lifetime. That doesn’t happen very often. Right? And like 50 Shades of Grey, Harry Potter or something like that, but the likelihood of that happening is probably slim to none. So you really got to get close to your objectives. And then once you do that, you figure out your return on investment. Then you figure out how much you can spend, you need to create a budget and again dependent upon the objectives I really, really, really strongly recommend getting a published my publishing company, I’m sorry,

Janine Bolon
Publicist, a publicist; that’s the word you’re seeking.

Michelle Seiler Tucker
I know I’m not feeling good today. So my brains not working,

Janine Bolon
You’re doing great. Keep rocking.

Michelle Seiler Tucker
Getting a publicist and then, you know, and then look at your grassroots. You know, do you have? Are you a speaker? Can you get on stages? Because that’s the best way to sell books. Yeah, so the top five things, you know, going back to that is, number one, getting crystal clear in your objective, while you’re writing the book, who’s your messaging for? Who’s your target audience? And how do you all eye it then create a budget, get the right publishing company, create that budget and then go from there, rather, it’s going to be gotta get a publicist, always have to get a marketing company. So you can do grassroots like Clubhouse and everything else we mentioned.

Janine Bolon
I love. I love that. Thank you so much. And so the next question, this is one, that I get so much good quality content from it. And that is, what is the one thing you most misunderstood about being or becoming an author, like, when you were writing your first book? You know, like you said, you have 22 years of experience. So what was it that you most misunderstood about the whole process of being an author?

Michelle Seiler Tucker
I think I misunderstood think it’s gonna be harder than it really is. To me, writing a book is the easy part, selling the book. Yeah, that is the hardest part. And so I enjoy it. And I encourage everyone to do this. If you’re new in the process, get yourself a mentor, I’ve joined the Raymond Aaron Plan who wrote Chicken Soup for the Soul. He’s a Canadian, and he wrote Marketing for Dummies. And so I joined his program. And his program helped me; I didn’t follow it to the tee. But it did help me because it helped me outline, you know, outline a table of contents outline what the chapters are going to be. And that helped significantly. But you know, his process was like six months to a year, I finished my books in six weeks, if I can’t come up with it in six weeks, I’m not writing the book.

Janine Bolon
Right? Right.

Michelle Seiler Tucker
So my process now is very different than what he taught me. But it’s not. For me, it’s not as hard as I thought it was. Because I’m not making stuff up. I’m not writing something based on fiction. You know, I’m writing based upon 22 years of experience in the industry buying and selling fixing growing companies. So it just flows out of me. Um, the other thing is a couple of things is, first, I started with a dictating thing. And it couldn’t understand my accent. So I had to keep recording, doing it again and doing it again, I’m like, forget this. And then somebody suggested a ghostwriter. So I didn’t start with the ghostwriter for Sell Your Business, I started working with a ghost writer for Exit Rich. And within three months, I’m like, nope, this isn’t working for me. Because every time I tell you a story, you have slaughtered the story. And it doesn’t come out the way I told you. So I think the big thing for me was, you got to figure out what your style is. So I thought mine was going to be dictating and I’m like, no, I’m really good at typing. So every single word and Exit Rich, 325 pages, is hand typed by me. Because my thoughts fall out when I type, I’m one to type everything down. I don’t write I type. And I’ve always been like that. And you could be sitting here talking while you’re sitting here talking to me. And normally, if you weren’t interviewing me, I would be typing everything you’re saying. And that’s what I do with all my clients. So you really got to figure out what works best for you. Is it dictation? Is it a ghostwriter? For me it’s typing it because that’s how all of the content flows from my brain onto the keyboard.

Janine Bolon
Thanks so much for sharing that because you took us through a whole odyssey of you know, all the different ways that you tried and learned how to write and it really is what works for you, and you try to everybody else’s way, and you came up with your own process. So that’s absolutely brilliant.

Michelle Seiler Tucker
And I’d like to say one more thing on that. The other thing I want to say and encourage people to do, authors to do, is don’t worry about perfection. That’s why they don’t get their book done. I talked to people like oh, well I’m two years already in my book and they go what about you? Six weeks, done. You know, don’t worry about perfection. I will type everything out. It flows from my brain it’s going on to the keypad. And if I spell something wrong, I used to go back in the beginning and go back and correct it all. That is a time waster a big, big, big, big-time waster. And now I just let it flow out. I type it as it flows. And I don’t worry about perfection. I don’t worry about spelling errors or grammatical errors or anything like that. Because those can be cleaned up easily. The hardest thing for authors is getting the content out of their head onto paper.

Janine Bolon
Agreed? Totally, totally agree. Well said. So last question for you, what is the primary thing that was your biggest reward about being an author?

Michelle Seiler Tucker
Well, I mentioned this earlier, I think one of the biggest rewards is exposure, and brand recognition, name awareness. And people actually knowing who I am now getting invited to be on TV shows. I’ve been invited on so many different news stations, TV shows, radio shows, etc. So it was really helping me to brand, my expertise, so I can help others. Because again, as the best kept secret, you’re only going to help your immediate audience, you know. I think that was the biggest thing. Also, making the Wall Street Journal, USA Today was huge for us, you know, because I strive for that. I was really shooting for that. We had enough numbers to make the New York Times, but we didn’t because they they picked all previous titles. And then we got a really big award a Benjamin Franklin Authors Award. We won that.

Janine Bolon
Congratulations!

Michelle Seiler Tucker
Thank you. So I think

Janine Bolon
That’s awesome.

Michelle Seiler Tucker
So, thank you so much. And you know what I’m telling I’m gonna tell you what my biggest reward is. My biggest reward from writing Exit Rich is when businesses have been in business 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 years say, my God, that’s the best business book I’ve ever read. My gosh, you know, they print it out and give it to their departments to read it. But everybody who’s read Exit Rich, has huge, huge, huge compliments. Did it really change your business? I have one guy; it’s been in the media industry for 20 plus years. He’s like, Michelle, I don’t know half of this stuff in this book. Now I give your book to every one of my departments. So the biggest reward to me is what my readers say.

Janine Bolon
Yep, I have to agree with that. The stories you get back man, it made it worth all the headaches. And as I say, banging the head against the keyboard, trying to get words to come that are eluding me. Anything else you care to share with us that we haven’t talked about yet today?

Michelle Seiler Tucker
Well, another big tip I wanted to give too, is that the reason I can write a book in six weeks, is because you got to you gotta get your mind, right. You gotta get your mindset right. And you got it, you got to get your mindset, right. And you have to schedule it. So many authors write when they can get to it or when they feel like it. I do it in six weeks, because I pick a specific time a specific window. And it’s always during the holidays. So I really start right before Thanksgiving, my husband’s like, are you crazy? Why you writing a book during the holidays, you know how busy we are. But I write that book because my company is not as busy during the holidays. And I tell my business owners, all my partners, listen, don’t bother me unless you have a buyer. So I write usually, I usually get up at 4am. And I’ll write, from 430 to five, till five 530 at night, couple of breaks in between maybe six. And then we always have a house of my husband’s family. And, you know, they’re wanting to have cocktails and stuff. I’m like, look, I’ll come down for cocktails at 530 or six. But you have to really get into the mindset. I can’t do that every year because it is hard work. And it does take dedication, and you have to stick to it. And that’s how I write. I pick that time window wisely. Nobody bother me. I’m not working on anything else but this. And I remember the first time I wrote my very first book was right after my daughter was born, which was really bad timing. So I recommend really getting that mindset. You don’t have to write it for six weeks. But reverse engineer it say, look, I want to write this book and I want to do it in this timeframe. But reverse engineer your days hours how long that’s going to take you so you’re not just endlessly writing a book that takes years upon years.

Janine Bolon
I agree. Thank you so much for your time today. Michelle, if somebody wants to reach out to connect with you, what’s the easiest way for them to do that?

Michelle Seiler Tucker
The easiest way is to go to STI which stands for Seiler Tucker Incorporated. Go to [email protected].

Janine Bolon
Okay.

Michelle Seiler Tucker
And all of my stuff is there. My main website, you can buy my Exit Rich book, you know, really anywhere, Hudson Bookstores. Also, another thing is that I’m excited about that, because I’ll tell you is that we launched Exit Rich audio version in May.

Janine Bolon
Congratulations because I know the amount of effort it takes to put an audio book up on Audible. It is not simple. It’s highly complicated. And congratulations that took some effort.

Janine Bolon
I didn’t do it, my publishing company did.

Janine Bolon
But that’s what I’m saying. For those of you who think oh, audiobooks, no problem. No, no, there is a process and it is quite involved to get an audio book up.

Michelle Seiler Tucker
Janine, you’re so accurate about you’re so right about that because when I recorded my first book, Sell Your Business for More Than It’s Worth, it was the most pain I ever went through, it was worse than giving labor and going through labor. I had to stand up for like three or four days can’t sit, gotta be energetic, gotta be always on. They make you repeat stuff over and over and over again, my back hurt my neck hurt, everything hurt. And I’m like, you know what, I’m never doing that again. I never liked my voice to begin with. So the publishing company recommended. You know, what do they call read over what do they call them?

Janine Bolon
Voiceover talent.

Michelle Seiler Tucker
Yeah, of course, I call them readovers, but voiceover talent, and that that was the way to go for me. But again, you got to figure out the best way to go for you.

Janine Bolon
Right. Well, thank you so much for your time today. And that’s it. Michelle has answered our questions. So that got our information in store for you with her latest work. And don’t forget to check out her website. If you’ll say again for us, please.

Michelle Seiler Tucker
STI at three sixty.com.

Janine Bolon
Thank you so much. And I thank you so much for being our spotlighted author today that was Michelle Seiler Tucker. And if you are an author, or you know of an author, you would like us to spotlight please visit our website, Authorpodcasting.com where you will find the 99 Author Project listed. We talk to all authors from all walks of life as we build out book number 12 which is Advice from Authors to Authors due out in 2023. And this is Janine Bolon signing off with you today and all of us here at the 8 Gates that produces The Janine Bolon Show. We wish you a wonderful weekend. We encourage you to get your message, your story, or your knowledge out into the world and make it a better place just like the author today Michelle was doing. We’ll see you again next week. And until then keep sharing what you know with others, keep shining that light that is you, and don’t forget to go out today and just do something for yourself that’s plain fun.

Bryan Hyde
Thank you for listening to the Janine Bolon show. Be sure to subscribe to our show notes by going to www.theJanineBolonshow.com, where you’ll find additional resources as well as the opportunity to sign up to receive our program in your email each week. Be sure to visit our sponsor at www.the8gates.com.

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